How to choose car speakers Crutchfield

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Hey Im Uk Training Manager Here At Crutchfield, And

in this video we’re going to talk about how to choose the right car speakers for you and your car and your music. One of the first things you should consider is what speakers will fit your car, and thankfully we’ve done a lot of the work for you. You can simply enter your vehicle in the UK What Fits My Car” section of Crutchfield. com. Once you’ve entered your vehicle details, it will show you lists of speakers and receivers that we know will fit either with or without modifications.

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Once you’ve plugged your vehicle in and you can tell what fits your car, there’s a lot of other things to consider. First off, what is your end goal. Are you just trying to replace a blown speaker, are you trying to build a really great sound quality system, or somewhere. in between All of those things should be considered when you’re choosing your speakers.

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Let’s start with a simple speaker replacement. Maybe. You just need a new set of speakers to replace a blown factory speaker, or you just want a little bit better sound but you don’t want to make major changes. You should be looking for a couple things in your speaker.

One, A Speaker With High Efficiency.

. This is the sensitivity rating. Generally, high sensitivity is somewhere in the 90 UK and up range. Those speakers will do more with less power, which is important because your factory radio doesn’t have a lot of power, so higher efficiency speakers will sound better than lower efficiency speakers When you are using a factory radio.

You Also Want To Look At

the power handling of your speakers.. You don’t need speakers that can handle a lot of power. In. fact, you want speakers that can work with not much power at all, and if the speakers you’re looking at have a power range given, look for a very low number.

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For example, some speakers will work with as little as 2 watts of power. Once you’ve put your vehicle into our website and you’re looking at all the choices, you might be a little overwhelmed. . There’s a lot of speakers that fit in most cars, and sometimes there’s even multiple sizes that will fit in the same location in your car, and that’s because of things like speaker brackets and the ability to put smaller speakers into a larger opening.

So Whenever You Can, Go With

the largest speaker that will fit in any particular location in your car.. For example, if you have a choice between six-and-a-halfs and five-and-a-quarters, six-and-a-half generally will sound better. They’ll go a little. Won’t have quite as much bass as a six-and-a-half.

Lets Apply That Same Logic To The Tweeter.

If you’re comparing a couple speakers and one of them has a larger tweeter than the other,. For example,, a one-inch silk dome tweeter compared to a half-inch Silk Dome tweeter, that larger tweeter will also sound better. It will blend better with the woofer and give you a nicer sound all the way from the high frequencies down through the mid–range blending into the woofer. Another specification you’re going to see on all of our speakers is the frequency response.

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These are the frequencies that the manufacturer says any particular speaker can faithfully reproduce. The. Lowest number is bass. How low can it go.

The Higher Number Is All Of The High

frequencies, the stuff. The tweeter, the electric guitars, the female vocals, trumpets, things like that. And. This range is kind. speaker with the most bass, go with the largest speaker you can with the lowest frequency response.

And On The High End Youll See Some

speakers go all the way up to 20,000 Hertz and beyond. Now. The range of human hearing is from about 20 hertz to about 20,000 Hertz, and most of our adult ears can’t even hear up that high. SO as long as your speakers go to about 20,000 Hertz and beyond, you’re fine. If you’re looking for something above and beyond a simple speaker replacement, you’re going to want to look for a couple different things.

You Can Get Better Speakers That

are made of better materials, they will also handle more wattage. This allows you to get a bigger amplifier, like as in an aftermarket radio or a separate amplifier, and when you have extra power for your speakers, You don’t have to be as concerned about the sensitivity rating. As you start looking through the speaker options you’re going to notice that some speakers have tweeters and mid-ranges built into the basket along with the woofer, and some of them have separate tweeters. . These are called component systems, and they can be very different when it comes time to installing speakers with the tweeters and the mid-ranges built in.

We Generally Call These Two-Way And

three-way speakers, they’re going to be a little bit easier to install than a component system because they will simply replace the factory speaker in the main factory, opening in your doors or in your dash or in your rear deck. The benefit of going with component speakers where the tweeter is separate from the woofer is better imaging up front, and that happens because your tweeter is generally mounted up a little bit higher, making those higher frequencies much easier to hear. You kind of want it to sound like the band is on the hood of your car. One thing to consider when installing components is that the woofer will generally be a straightforward replacement,. However, the tweeter will be a little bit more difficult to install.

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WE always want to consider a tweeter as a custom installation. You’ll be doing things like fabricating a bracket, or cutting a hole and running some wires, there’s nothing standard about those tweeter mounts from the factory, and aftermarket tweeters generally come with lots of hardware and brackets and screws, and ways to get them mounted. So you’ll get it done, but it’s not the easiest. Thing in the world.

Many Component Systems Come With A Separate Passive

crossover network. IT’s, usually a box, and inside that box is a bunch of coils and capacitors and that’s where all your speaker connections are made. The job of the crossover is to send the high frequencies to the tweeter and the low frequencies to the woofer. That crossover has to be put somewhere. You can put it in your doors, in your kick panel, in your dash somewhere, or even back by your amplifiers.

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Some of the component systems that are kind of made for you to hook them up to your factory radio, the crossover might simply be an inline capacitor with your tweeter, so there’s not much extra installation concern. There. Again, the benefit of component speakers is getting that tweeter mounted up a little higher and creating a nicer stereo image and a better. Soundstage.

You Cant Always Put Those Extra

tweeters in your car, though, so you might need to go with a two-way or a three-way, and there are some with a swiveling or pivoting tweeter, so that you can angle it up towards your listening area towards your ears, so that even though your woofer is mounted down low in your door, you can sort of angle the sound up to where you can hear it. And as long as we’re talking about tweeters, let’s talk about the materials used in tweeters and how they sound. There’s several different common materials, and they all have a slightly different tonal characteristic. For example,, silk or cloth tweeters will typically sound warm and musical, ceramic or metallic tweeters will usually sound a little bit more crisp and sharp and precise. Some tweeters even have a little switch on them,, which is an attenuation.

Allows You To Determine Just How Bright

they sound. ANd that’s important if your speakers are mounted in different places. . IF they’re mounted up high fairly close to your ears, you might tone them down a little bit, but if they’re mounted down low in your doors, you might want to make them a little bit extra bright to get that sound to be a little clearer and sharper. Next we’ll talk about woofers.

The Woofer Is Usually The Biggest Part

of the speaker, and it’s responsible for the lowest frequencies all the way down into the bass and up into the mid-range. Woofer materials will also differ just like tweeter materials. You’ll see things like paper, plastic, polypropylene, flax, some very exotic materials in some of our more expensive options. . When they design speakers, what they’re going for is something that can accurately and faithfully reproduce the music.

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Without Distortion.

TO do that, that woofer needs to be lightweight and rigid, so it can handle the power and move in and out without distortion. . Around the outside edge of the woofer cone is something called a surround. This is part of the speaker’s suspension system.

It Connects The Woofer Cone To The Frame

and allows the woofer Cone to move in and out, making music. The material of that surround is actually pretty important as well. . You’ll see foam surrounds on most of your factory speakers, which is why they deteriorate and fall apart after a few years In your car. Most of our aftermarket speakers have either treated cloth or butyl rubber surrounds, and these materials will last a lot longer.

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They’ll be more durable and still give your speaker the freedom it needs to move in and out, playing your music. We get it, there’s a lot of speakers to choose from, even when you put your car in you might be faced with hundreds of speakers to choose from. Hopefully. This video has given you some tools you can use to figure out which speakers are going to sound right in your car.

Thank You So Much For Watching.

Please go ahead and add any questions you might have in the comment section down here on the video, and also please like and subscribe. Thanks again. .

Summary

Crutchfield‘s UK training manager explains how to choose the right car speakers for you and your car and your music . You can simply enter your vehicle in the UK What Fits My Car” section of Crutchfields.com . Once you’ve entered your vehicle details, it will show you lists of speakers and receivers that we know will fit either with or without modifications . You also want to look at the power handling of your speakers. You don’t need speakers that can handle a lot of power at all, and if the speakers you’re looking at have a power range given, look for a very low number. For example, some speakers will work with as little as 2 watts of power. Some speakers will sound better than lower efficiency speakers when you are using a factory radio. You should be looking for a speaker with a high sensitivity. The sensitivity rating is somewhere in the 90 UK and up range. The speakers will do more with more with less power, which is important because your…. Click here to read more and watch the full video